Current Reading August 2021

I read The Narrative Texas Santa Fe Expedition by George Kendall.

This was a great narrative of an expedition written by Kendall who was a soldier and a war correspondent. Kendall traveled to the Republic of Texas in 1841 to join up with and report on Gov. Lamar's attempt to take Santa Fe from the Mexicans and secure New Mexico for the Americans. This expedition met with disaster and Kendall and others were marched 2000 miles and put into a Mexican prison--a leper colony, where Kendall caught smallpox. Surprisingly he survived. While in prison he wrote letters which were posted daily. He spent about a year imprisoned before he was released upon payment by influential friends. One of my favorite parts of the book was his detailed description of Mexican food and customs. The military maneuvers were very dry and I oftentimes skimmed these. 878 pages 4.5*

I have just finished Karl-Heinz Frieser's The Blitzkrieg Legend. The book was originally written in German and has been translated into English. Frieser argues that there was no accepted blitzkrieg doctrine in the German army at the beginning of WWII. The approach used in France was cobbled together against resistance from the German high command and even from Hitler. The commanders who initiated the breakthrough and achieved victory in France in 1940 often disobeyed direct orders from their superiors to carry out their attack or managed to be out of contact during critical periods. Only after France 1940 did Hitler and the German command adopt "blitzkrieg" with disastrous results as they confused an operational level approach for a strategic solution. The book is well thought out and carefully argued. It can be a little long at times, but is definitely worth the read.

I read part of but gave up on Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift by Thomas E. Chavez. It had promise, being the history of how Spain contributed to the success of the American Revolution by undermining the British early on and then later through supporting the rebels and actual military actions against British outposts. However, it was rather ponderous and the first part was so much focused on the personalities of this minister and that governor. And then it was correspondence and talks and I finally just decided life is too short to grind through it. It's not a bad book, but I just don't want to spend hours and hours on who said what to whom and when.

Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico by Susan Shelby Magoffin This was a delightful account of a wagon caravan from Independence, Missouri, to Chihuahua, Mexico in 1846-1847 (during the Texas-Mexican War). The author was 18 year old, newly married, Susan Shelby Magoffin. It was obvious she was well educated and well-read. This was a very enjoyable read with copious footnotes, sometimes 3 pages in length, but added much to the explanation of the some of the personages mentioned within Ms. Magoffin's entries. 260 pages

I finished The Slave Ship: A Human History by Marcus Rediker, one of the most disturbing, depressing books I've read in a long time. This book is exactly what the title suggests, a history of the process of bringing slaves to the Americas from Africa. Rediker has created a comprehensive and very well written narrative. He tells of the cultures and kingdoms of Western Africa who took part in kidnapping members of other groups, marching them sometimes hundreds of miles to the coast and selling them to European slave traders. He uses first person accounts to describe what it was like to be one of those captured in that way. He finishes up by talking about the abolitionist movement and how the practice was finally brought to an end. But mostly Rediker describes the horror and despair the kidnapped experienced aboard the slave ships themselves. And, in addition, the violence, cruelty and high mortality rates experienced not just by the enslaved, but by crew members as well. The book, very well written, as I said above, is a detailed horror show from beginning to end. If you can put yourself through it, though, it is important reading, a crucial, fundamental part of the American and European story.

Finished a very enjoyable Pawnee Bill: A Biography of Major Gordon W. Lillie by Glenn Shirley. Pawnee Bill was in his times as famous as "Buffalo" Bill Cody. He was a cowboy, a friend to and White Chief of the Pawnee Indians, a leader of the Oklahoma Land Boomers, a noted showman with his own "Wild Wild and Great Far East" show, a businessman of some note and also lead the movement to preserve and protect the American Bison. The book is very readable and interesting.